Production still from Art21′s Exclusive video “Robert Mangold: Town & Country.”

Our latest Exclusive video is now live! Click to watch Robert Mangold: Town & Country on Art21.org.

Filmed at Robert Mangold’s upstate New York home and studio in 2011, the artist describes his experiences living and working in New York City in the early 1960s as well as his decision to move to the country later that decade. Mangold’s shift from the city to the country is reflected in his work including the series Walls and Areas (1963) and Curved Areas (1968). Robert Mangold and his wife, painter Sylvia Plimack Mangold, provided images from their personal archive for this video.

Robert Mangold translates the most basic of formal elements—shape, line, and color—into paintings, prints, and drawings whose simplicity of form expresses complex ideas. He renders the surface of each canvas with subtle color modulations and sinewy, hand-drawn graphite lines. Mangold works in multiple series of shaped canvases over many years, exploring variations on rings, columns, trapezoids, arches, and crosses, and compositions without centers.

Robert Mangold is featured in the Season 6 (2012) episode “Balance” of the Art in the Twenty-First Century program on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via Art21.org, PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes, or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: Robert Mangold. Archival Images Courtesy: Al Held Foundation, Robert Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold. Photography: John Sherman. Theme Music: Peter Foley.

Don’t forget: As part of the Art21 Blog’s current Flash Points topic on storytelling, artist Eleanor Antin will take over the @Art21 Twitter account  to perform a very special reading today, Friday, October 26, from 2:00–3:00 p.m. EST.

Through posts of 140 characters or less, the artist will “read” stanzas of a story from her memoir, Conversations with Stalin, before embarking on four additional performances throughout New York City.

This will be the first time that we have invited anyone—let alone one of our featured artists—to speak through our Twitter account. Likewise, this will be Eleanor Antin’s first-ever “social media” performance. Needless to say, we appreciate your participation and feedback!

To witness Eleanor Antin speak and perform in person is already a unique and special experience; but, to read along with the artist through 140-character posts, a new participatory element is introduced to the concept of a public reading, and the pace and tone of the story itself will come across in a completely different way.

The artist encourages audience participation throughout, and will respond to questions submitted by audience members following the live Twitter “reading.”

Today from 2:00–3:00 p.m. EST, follow along with @Art21 and the hashtag #AntinCWS, ask questions, and see what else Eleanor Antin has to say.

Until then, we will welcome any advance questions via Twitter or the comments of this post. A full list of the artist’s New York City performances is below.

Eleanor Antin: Conversations with Stalin
Reading performances

Friday, October 26, 2:00–3:00 p.m., online with Art21 (@art21; #AntinCWS)

Sunday, October 28, 2:30 p.m., at The Jewish Museum

Tuesday, October 30, 7:00 p.m., at Columbia University School of the Arts

Thursday, November 1, 7:00 p.m., at Brooklyn Museum

Friday, November 2, 6:30 p.m., at Whitney Museum of American Art

A closing reception for the artist will be held at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts on November 3, 6:00–8:00 p.m.

Our big thanks to Taylor Trabulus for her intelligent guest blog contributions over the past two weeks. Next up, we have Alex Allenchey, a writer based in Brooklyn, NY. His interests include the visual arts and the art market, as well as contemporary culture, popular music, and professional sports, and the intersections therein. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Art History from James Madison University and an M.F.A. in Art Criticism and Writing from the School of Visual Arts. His poetically concise exhibition reviews can be found at @ArtReviewHaikus. Welcome, Alex!

Our latest Exclusive video is now live! Click to watch Rackstraw Downes: Some Painters on Art21.org!

Filmed in Presidio, Texas in late 2010, painter Rackstraw Downes describes why he views the work of some long-deceased painters to be relevant to his own contemporary practice. Paintings by such artists are shown including Claude Lorrain’s Sunrise (1646–47), Jacob van Ruisdael’s Wheat Fields (1670), and J.M.W. Turner’sThe Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1834–35). Despite not using the same techniques as these painters, Downes seeks out their work because he considers it “useful,” “provocative,” and “like challenges.”

Rackstraw Downes is featured in the Season 6 (2012) episode “Balance” of the Art in the Twenty-First Century program on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via Art21.org, PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes, or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Ray Day. Editor: Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: Rackstraw Downes, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Theme Music: Peter Foley.

Our latest New York Close Up video is now live! Click to watch Erin Shirreff Takes Her Time on Art21.org’s NYCU website.

How does an artist transform her source material? At her Greenpoint, Brooklyn studio, artist Erin Shirreff discusses the creation of her recent video projection, Lake (2012). Working from a photograph of Lake Okanagan (the area she grew up in British Columbia, Canada) she found in an early 1980’s era tourist magazine, Shirreff builds Lake from a single found image. Shirreff’s process is an unexpected mixture of digital and analog technique: in Photoshop, she creates a series of color variations of the original source picture but then re-photographs those variations—employing intentionally distorting lighting techniques—to create thousands of “secondary” images. Importing those secondary images into her editing software, Shirreff constructs a seamless video sequence, creating the effect of an uncannily shifting landscape in a slow but constant state of visual change.

Editing the video presents a subtle aesthetic challenge. Sherriff strives to find the right balance between the artifice of the naturalistic, weather-like effects (produced by the analog light and color interventions) and the illusion-breaking reality of the original photographic surface. In previous video works like Roden Crater (2009) and UN 2010 (2010), Shirreff reveals her on-going psychological fascination with singular forms situated in a deep landscape. The slow play of color and light over the Roden Crater and the UN building serve to throw the forms’ fundamental stillness and apartness into relief. At the Hauser & Wirth gallery space in Manhattan, Lake is projected on a freestanding wall, yet another transformation of the original source image, this time from two-dimensional photograph to now time-based sculptural object.

Erin Shirreff (b. 1975, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

CREDITS | “New York Close Up” Created & Produced by: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Editor: Brad Kimbrough. Cinematography: Rafael Moreno Salazar & Nick Ravich. Sound: Scott Fernjack & Nick Ravich. Associate Producer: Ian Forster. Production Assistant: Amanda Long & Tida Tippapart. Design: Open. Artwork: Erin Shirreff. Thanks: British Columbia Magazine, Hauser & Wirth, Justin Martin, Janina McLaren, & Parks Canada. An Art21 Workshop Production. © Art21, Inc. 2012. All rights reserved.

Taylor Trabulus.

A huge thanks goes to Brendan Carroll for his absolutely fantastic series of posts on art world “money matters.” We hope to have Brendan back on the blog again sometime soon! In the meantime, you can keep up with his work and writing by visiting Brendan’s website here.

Next up, we have Taylor Trabulus, a NYC-based artist and curator. Taylor received her BA in Studio Arts from Bard College in 2010. She has worked in the curatorial department at the Whitney Museum and currently is at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, NY. She co-runs an artist salon called Blue Stocking Society that organizes meetings, shows, and events, and publishes zines. Most recently, Taylor co-curated the summer exhibition, Vision Quest at Nicole Klagsbrun and put together an accompanying screening at Anthology Film Archives, NY. She was born in Los Angeles and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

The Art21 Blog is pleased to announce the launch of a new column — New Kids on the Block, written by longtime Art21 contributor Jacquelyn Gleisner.

New Kids on the Block is the third Art21 column to which Jacquelyn Gleisner has contributed–previous to this, she wrote for Open Enrollment and co-founded Praxis Makes Perfect with Jeffrey Songco. Her new column will feature interviews with up-and-coming artists who work in different media and cover a range of social and political interests. It will offer a firsthand examination of the work and experiences of contemporary artists with a focus on the fresh and fledgling.

Jacquelyn Gleisner is a visual artist and writer who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a BFA in studio art from Boston University and an MFA in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has also studied at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy and at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland as a Fulbright scholar. A regular contributor for the Art21 blog since 2011, Gleisner has been published in print as well as a handful of online publications, including the United States Embassy of Finland’s blog, Beat of America and Wow/Huh. She has exhibited her work in the United States and Europe.

New Kids on the Block posts on the second Monday of each month. You can learn more about Jacquelyn and her work by visiting www.jacquelyngleisner.com. 

Production still from the Exclusive video “El Anatsui: Language & Symbols.”

Our latest Exclusive video is now live! Click to watch El Anatsui: Language & Symbols art Art21.org.

Filmed in 2011 at The Museum of Modern Art in Hayama, Japan, El Anatsui discusses the role of language and symbols in his artwork. When naming works such as “Gli” (2010), Anatsui often uses his native language of Ewe because Ewe words can have a range of meanings when pronounced differently. Anatsui also describes the formative experience of discovering adinkra symbols, a West African system of abstract symbols that represent specific concepts or aphorisms.

El Anatsui is featured in the Season 6 (2012) episode “Change” of the Art in the Twenty-First Century program on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via Art21.org, PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes, or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Takahisa Araki & Joel Shapiro. Sound: Steve Bores. Editor: Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: El Anatsui & Museum for African Art. Special Thanks: Lisa Binder, The Museum of Modern Art, Hayama, Japan, Jack Shainman Gallery & Wellesley College. Theme Music: Peter Foley.

Our grateful thanks to Mike HJ Chang for his guest blog series on contemporary art–and contemporary art issues–in Singapore right now. You can keep up with what Mike is writing and working on by visiting his website here.

Next up, get ready for a meaty series of Q&As with artists and curators about the role and impact of money in the art world. For his guest blog stint, Brendan Carroll, an artist, writer and independent curator based in New York, will present a guest blog series he’s calling “Money Matters.” Each post will look at how money and income streams influence the type of work and aesthetic decisions artists (as well as curators) make inside and outside the studio. We’re extremely excited to have Brendan on board the Art21 Blog for the next two weeks!

Brendan Carroll is an artist, writer, and independent curator. He is a regular contributor to Web site Hyperallergic, where he covers museum and gallery exhibitions, as well as contributes sibling movie reviews with his sister, Marisa. Currently, he is photo-bombing candid photographs from Instagram and painting a wall-size mural of chicken and waffles. Artist Vidal Centeno has invited Brendan to participate in a collaborative text-based project that will take place this autumn. His upcoming curatorial projects include solo exhibitions of Valeri Larko and Tom McGlynn, as well as a group exhibition at The Pierro Gallery in South Orange, NJ, in 2013. He and his wife, Marie, live in Astoria with Hammer, their 17-pound Beagle-mix.

Brendan has exhibited his work in numerous galleries and museums, including Munch Gallery, Lower East Side, NY; Spattered Columns, New York, NY; Famous Accountants, Bushwick, NY; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; Leubsdorf Art Gallery (Hunter College), New York, NY; Center for the Book Arts, New York, NY; A.M. Richard Fine Art, Brooklyn, NY; Exile, Berlin, Germany; Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ. His work has been reviewed in several periodicals, including The New York Times, Village Voice, Art Fag City, ART:21 Blog, and Time Out New York. He has participated in AIM 28 (Artist in the Marketplace) at The Bronx Museum of the Arts. He has won several awards, including a Geraldine Dodge Fellowship to attend Vermont Studio Center in 2001. He received his BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, in 1996.

You can see Brendan’s artwork at these websites:

brendanscottcarroll.com
agitatorscollective.blogspot.com

And read more of Brendan’s writing at:

hyperallergic.com/author/brendan-carroll
https://twitter.com/_brendancarroll
brendanscottcarroll.wordpress.com

Production still from Art21's Exclusive video, "Lynda Benglis: India."

Our lastest Exclusive video is now live! Click to watch Lynda Benglis: India at Art21.org.

Filmed in 2011, artist Lynda Benglis gives a tour of the family home of Anand Sarabhai in Ahmedabad, India, a city she has been visiting and working in for over thirty years. Benglis describes her interest in the Indian landscape and culture and why she enjoys spending time with the Sarabhai family. Various works are shown in Benglis’s studio on the property including “The Manu” (2008) which she created by manipulating a beeswax mixture and then making stainless steel casts of the resulting forms.

Lynda Benglis is featured in the Season 6 (2012) episode “Boundaries” of the Art in the Twenty-First Century program on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via Art21.org, PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes, or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

CREDITS: Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Nick Ravich & Susan Sollins. Camera: Sunil Pillai. Sound: Gissy Michael. Editor: Morgan Riles. Artwork Courtesy: Lynda Benglis. Special Thanks: Anand Sarabhai. Theme Music: Peter Foley.